A River Runs Through It
by rain stormraider
Summary: Post BDM......What it feels like for a girl....


**Prompt:** River has a moment of clarity. For the LJ Firefly FanFic Fest.

**Warning:** None...but it is cannon and it is post BDM...

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Firefly, Joss Whedon does.......more power to him......

**Summary:** What it feels like for a girl.....

* * *

You would think that life had its lessons and its meanings. That life was about experiences and feelings and the instinctual sense of what mattered and what didn't.

It wasn't everyday that you noticed the minute rise of temperature of your brother's body as it was suffused with a light blush, or the startling glassiness to his eyes, and that smile of contentment blooming on his face. It was a smile that you hadn't seen out in full-force since before the Alliance had last screwed with your head.

You'd felt love. You knew you had. Even if it hadn't been romantic or passionate or all-consuming, you knew you had felt it nonetheless. But to see it alive, to watch it blossom in front of you and to know that you had no part in it, which you could only watch from the sidelines, was another world. It was like waking up to a dream and knowing that it wasn't yours. And you maintained your silence because you really had nothing to say. And maybe it was better to not impart any unheeded words of wisdom as precious as they were. Your brother would get what he wanted and he'd make Kaylee his. There was nothing you could say that would change that.

Some days River was a cast-out. Not from the people and the ship she called home. But cast-out from her mind and all the others that inhabited it. She didn't mind sharing; it was a pretty big place inside her indeed. But sometimes River liked to curl up inside one deep and dark corner and lull herself to sleep. But neither sleep nor calmness ever came. The mind went on and on, a river of flickering light, gushing forth and never being contained. It upset her sometimes when it seemed to flood and would burst forth from within to make a physical appearance. When that happened, she hated how the others looked at her. She was not a glass ball that encased a fire ready to burn through everything. Then she'd run to Serenity's bridge where she'd hope to find peace in the toys she'd claimed since Wash's passing.

It was a cliché. Her life, her past, her future. It was an endless cycle that someone else out there was also probably doomed to repeat time and again. So River smiled from within. Once in a while she'd hear Kaylee laugh and see Simon smile and it would give her a reason to go on breathing.

Some times she'd watch Zoë wear her grief like armour. That would fascinate her for hours. She'd follow her around looking for clues. Never understanding how Zoë never forgot to breath. It was a mystery with new clues being uncovered every day. And River would momentarily forget that she wanted to warn Simon away from a life of abject happiness.

Some days everything pissed River off. The way the Captain and Inara played their never-ending games of pride and need. Simon and his stupid smiles.

There were other days where she felt that she was watching it all play out before her and those days she'd seek out Jayne and sit and watch him. He would grouse about her being underfoot but she didn't care for his words, only the simplicity of his thoughts and the fact that when she was with him, she was atleast alone in her head.

River preferred days over nights, not because she was afraid. No. It was because day or night was just an arbitrary cycle enforced by the others and it made her happy to screw around with it. She'd sleep for hours during the day. She was a marathon sleeper. It was her one natural talent the Alliance could not twist. And so when she found she could shut it all off, she slept. And in sleep, perchance to dream. She always dreamt of Serenity. Like it was a girl she knew well. Maybe Serenity was her mother, a protector for her soul. River couldn't be sure. But she liked to curl up in the co-pilot's chair and sleep for as long as she could.

But once, only once, sleep led to the fear that nipped at her heels during her sojourn through time and space. It gnashed its way into her head and River ran from it, this fear that at one time she did seek. Before, she'd sought it like the embrace of pain that kept everything else at bay. But one night out a thousand she'd lived, River was jarred awake by that ever-present fear. And without knowing, without thinking, a feat in of itself, River sought refuge in the only place she knew. She raced through the lighted corridors searching for the beacon: the sound of the crew in the living area. She halted as she entered and they all turned to face her sudden arrival. Steadying her breath, River danced into the room to take a seat between Zoë and Jayne.

Later, as she'd sit in the engine room humming a lullaby to Serenity's heart, she thought about her response to that fear. It had been instinctual and the others had not questioned her behaviour. Sitting between the widow and the warrior had made the voices die down.

It was a moment that came and went unnoticed. The first time she'd ever forgotten to catalogue a memory away for recall and research later on. So while River's brows creased in a frown with a stray thought endangering her delicate balance, Serenity kept sailing.


End file.
